Please forgive me for drawing your attention once again in such a short period to the struggle of the people of West Papua against the ‘democracy’ of Indonesia. Thankfully the international community is becoming ever more aware of the outrages that have been inflicted on the tribal communities of this island, who, as I said in West Papua – the Silent Genocide, have no ethnic or religious kinship with Indonesia, which forcibly occupied their home in the 1960s. I’ve now read some highly revealing reports in The Economist’s website, Cursed by Plenty and Indonesia’s Last Frontier.

Because people are unable to express their dissent openly – indeed even raising the flag of the independence movement risks a lengthy jail sentence – a guerrilla movement has arisen, not just fighting for freedom but fighting against the ruthless exploitation of the island’s natural resources.

There is heartbreaking tragedy to this. While the Indonesian army comes with the latest weaponry, the tribesmen, organised in the Free Papua Movement, which has been fighting for independence for forty years, are largely armed with spears, bows and arrows. It’s the Modern Age, in other words, against the Stone Age. It’s as well to remember, moreover, that some of the Papuan tribes were only ‘discovered’ by the outside world as late as 1938.

One leader of the independence movement said to The Economist’s reporter;

Indonesia might be a democracy, but not for us Papuans. They gave us autonomy which is a joke. We are different from those Indonesians. Just look at our skin, our hair, our language, our culture. We have nothing in common with them. We beg President Obama…to witness the oppression with his own eyes.

The oppression takes many forms. At Grasberg Mine in the Papuan mountains gold and copper is extracted with a hugely negative impact on the local environment. To protect the facility, immensely unpopular with the people, who are given to firing arrows at incoming helicopters, some 3000 Indonesian police and soldiers have been deployed.

The army is not just there in the normal line of duty, no, for it, too, has a financial interest in the smooth running of the mineral operations. In the town of Timka even the brothels are run by the military, according to one foreign mining worker. It’s the old story with Indonesia: no matter if it’s a dictatorship or democracy the army has always functioned as a state within a state.

Local people get very little benefit from enterprises arising. They are not allowed to run businesses, which are chiefly in the hands of “Indonesians”, as they invariably refer to the migrants from the west. They are left with the most menial and poorly paid jobs in a system which comes close to both racial and economic apartheid. Most of the Papuans live in abject poverty under constant threat from their overlords. Even talking to The Economist’s reporter entailed huge risks, given the rumours of torture and secret killings.

The Cursed by Plenty report concludes that, given the mineral wealth of West Papua, the Indonesians are never likely to relinquish control. For some time past the government in Jakarta has been encouraging mass migration from places like Java, to the point where the largley Christian Papuans, whose birth rate has declined markedly in contrast with their kinsmen in Papua New Guinea, are becoming a minority in their own land.

Here we are, in the modern world, witnessing one of the worst examples of colonialism in recent history, infinitely more rapacious than the system of rule that the Dutch once imposed on the archipelago. When it comes to brutality, immorality and ruthlessness the East does these things so much better. Let me suggest a new name for Indonesia: the Greater South Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. After all, it has a certain historical resonance.